Recently, the paper entitled "Cellular UAV to X Communications: Design and Optimization for Multi UAV Networks" published on IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, was awarded the IEEE Communications Society Asia-Pacific Region Outstanding Paper Award. The authors are Professor Lingyang Song and Assistant Professor Boya Di along with their group members from the School of Electronics.

Fig.1 2021 IEEE Communications Society Asia-Pacific Region Outstanding Paper Award

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Internet of Things (IoT), is an emerging topic in sensing and communication area, which is widely used in 5G mobile communication networks. Compared with traditional static IoT, UAV sensing nodes have the advantages of strong mobility and wide communication service scopes. However, as the scale of 5G networks continues to expand, a single UAV is limited by its energy and wireless transmission capabilities. It is quite challenging to ensure the real-time and reliability of sensing tasks.

The research group takes the lead in proposing the theory and method of UAV cooperative sensing and transmission, where UAVs cooperate with other UAVs, mobile users and ground base stations. It breaks through the limitations of a single UAV's energy and transmission range, improves the real-time and reliability of sensing tasks, and provides theoretical and technical support for promoting the development of 5G UAV IoT.

Fig.2 Model of cooperative UAV-to-X network

The research team jointly optimizes the trajectory and speed of UAVs and to manage the communication resources and real-time data processing. A cooperative sensing and communication protocol (as shown in Fig. 2) is designed to support multi-modes communication and sensing tasks of UAVs. The research involves UAV trajectory optimization, communication protocol design, and sensing data transmission and processing. It integrates knowledge from multiple disciplines such as wireless communication, signal processing, and sensing technology. The control theory, the optimization theory, and other theoretical methods are combined to form a set of interdisciplinary research methods, which has guiding significance for the deployment of UAVs in realistic IoT scenarios.

Fig.3 Cooperative UAV Sensing and Communication Protocol

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is an international association of electronic technology and information science engineers, which is the largest non-profit professional technical association of the world. The Asia-Pacific Region Outstanding Paper Award is awarded to recognize outstanding papers written by scholars in the Asia-Pacific region over the past three years and published in IEEE journals and conferences. 1-3 papers are awarded in each selection.

Shuhang Zhang, a doctoral graduate of the School of Electronics of Peking University, is the lead author of this paper. Professor Lingyang Song is the corresponding author of the paper. Dr. Hongliang Zhang and Dr. Boya Di have made important contributions to the completion of the work. This paper has been selected into the IEEE Best Reading List in the field of UAV-assisted wireless networks. It has been cited 287 times (data from Google Scholar) since its publication in 2019, and has been listed as a highly cited ESI paper (data from Web of Science). The research has been strongly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars, and the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Communication Systems and Networks.

Full text of paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8624565 

Information about the award: https://apb.regions.comsoc.org/awards